The Poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by Richard Garnett,
LL.D. (Lawrence and Bullen.)—Dr. Garnett writes a helpful and appreciative preface. He sees that Coleridge, as a poet, was curiously unequal, that he had a brief, very brief, period of maturity, which may be assigned to the year 1797, the year of " The Ancient Mariner," " Christabel," and "Genevieve." If he could have maintained this level there is no rank which he could not have claimed. Curiously enough, it was these poems, in which he was certainly at his best, that roused the special wrath of the 'Edinburgh Review, where Hazlitt declared that he could not see a ray of genius from beginning to end. Dr. Garnett has made a few additions to the results gained by former editors. —Selections from Wordsworth. By Andrew Lang. (Longmans and Co.)—Wordsworth, as has often been said, lends himself easily to the plan of extracts. IlAior IVLIeu narros. Mr. Lang furnishes an excellent preface, full of just and discriminating criticism. "There are poets more alluring both in life and verse ; poets with less of dross in their ore, with more of charm in their character ; but none more absolutely inspired when in- spiration came, none of a career more soberly honourable and brave, none with a better claim to be reckoned among pii sates et Phcebo digna locuti." The illustrations are chiefly of landscapes and natural objects.—The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White. With Biographical Introduction and Notes by H. Kirke Swan. (Walter Scott.)—There are some interesting biographical facts in the memoir. The early sale of his poems was very great. It was not any neglect in man, it was the hostility of Nature, that made shorter his careen—Four Poets. (Chapman and Hall.) —Poems from Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats have been selected by Mr. Oswald Crawfurd.
Previous page
